Dazzle

camouflage

History
Dazzle camouflage (also known as Razzle Dazzle or Dazzle painting) was a military camouflage
paint scheme used on ships, extensively during World War I and to a lesser extent in World War II
with the intention to not to conceal but to make it difficult to estimate a target's range, speed, and
heading. The idea is credited to the artist Norman Wilkinson who was serving in the Royal Naval
Volunteer Reserve when he had the idea in 1917. After the Allied Navies failed to develop effective
means to disguise ships in all weathers, the dazzle technique was employed, not in order to
conceal the ship, but rather to make it difficult for the enemy to estimate its type, size, speed and
direction of travel. After seeing a canon painted in dazzle camouflage trundling through the streets
of Paris, Picasso is reported to have taken credit for the innovation which seemed to him a
quintessentially cubist technique.
Dazzle was adopted by the Admiralty in Britain, and then by the United States Navy, with little
evaluation. Each ship's dazzle pattern was unique to avoid making classes of ships instantly
recognizable to the enemy. The result was that a profusion of dazzle schemes was tried, and the
evidence for their success was at best mixed. So many factors were involved that it was impossible
to determine which were important, and whether any of the colour schemes were effective.

Wilkinsons dazzle designs have been compared to what in 1917 was considered a
revolutionary movement in modern art, called cubism. It was made famous by artists
like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. While there is an overlap in appearance
between dazzle and cubist art, Wilkinson himself was anything but a modernist. He
was a celebrated marine painter and talented poster artist. He was commissioned to
create paintings for the elegant smoking rooms on board the Titanic and the Olympic.
Wilkinson was passionate about ships and the sea. It inspired him to travel from
Europe, to the US, Bahamas and Brazil. On submarine patrol he faced the dangers of
Gallipoli campaign, then returned to Britain in 1917 to serve on a minesweeping ship.
It was here that his idea for dazzle was born.

Fig. 1. A Ship painted with black and white strips depicting Dazzle camouflage

Fig. 2. Depiction of how Norman Wilkinson intended dazzle camouflage to cause the enemy to
take up poor firing position

Painting the fleet

Fig. 3. HMT Olympic in Dazzle Camouflage

Wilkinsons Dazzle Section developed hundreds of camouflage schemes, for large ships and
small. Each side of a ship had a different pattern. One vessel was the enormous Olympic sister
ship of the Titanic. Olympic became a troop ship during WW1 and was repainted in dazzle. She
shows some of the techniques used by dazzle designers . Bold shapes at the bow and stern
break up the form of the vessel. Angled lines suggest the distinctive smokestacks could be
leaning in another direction. And curves on the hull could be mistaken for the shape of the bow
wave created by water at the front of a fast-moving ship.

The Legacy of dazzle

The effectiveness of dazzle camouflage was never scientifically proven in World War
One. However, recent research from the University of Bristol that suggests it could still
have a role on modern battlefields.
Dazzle Camouflage Affects Speed Perception
A study by the School of Experimental Psychology found dazzle can alter the perception
of speed, as long as the target is moving fast enough. Participants saw two moving
patterns on a computer screen, one plain and one dazzle. They were asked to estimate
which was travelling faster. There was a reduction of around seven per cent in the
perceived speed of some high contrast dazzle patterns.
This would not have made a difference to a WW1 U-boat commander hunting slow
merchant ships. But it could make a difference today where handheld rocket propelled
grenades are fired at short range against moving vehicles.
Dr Nick Scott-Samuel, who led the study, says: In a typical situation involving an
attack on a Land Rover, the reduction in perceived speed would be sufficient to make
the grenade miss by about a metre. This could be the difference between survival or
otherwise.

Dazzle Camouflage Influences Perceived Speed and Hit Rates

Researchers largely agree that stripes can influence the perception of speed,
but it is less clear if the orientation of the stripes affects whether objects are
perceived as moving faster or slower. Stripes can be oriented either parallel or
perpendicular to movement direction. In the following, we refer to stripes
parallel to movement direction as longitudinal stripes, and stripes
perpendicular to movement direction as vertical stripes. It has been debated if
longitudinal stripes increase or decrease perceived speed and if longitudinally
striped objects are perceived as faster than vertically striped objects. On the
one hand, Gabor patches aligned with the direction of movement were
perceived as moving faster than patches set at an angle to the direction of
movement, suggesting that longitudinal patterns may be perceived as faster
than vertical stripes. On the other hand, it has been argued that longitudinal
stripes may have an advantage over vertical stripes in straight, high-speed
flight because they make a snake appear to move more slowly than it actually
does. In addition, vertical stripesalthough they have good cryptic properties if
the snake stays stillare thought to provide reference points that enhance
movement detection and speed estimation. In support of this theory, studies
have shown a genetic correlation between flight behavior and dorsal patterns
in garter snakes. In contrast, others did not find a difference in how easily
vertically and longitudinally striped objects were hit or in perceived speed.